Previously, IntelliCloud (our as-a-service offering for analytics at scale) could only be ordered through a Teradata Account Team. You can still do that, of course, but we now also offer a new channel through which to subscribe to IntelliCloud: AWS Marketplace. We’re excited about this new option because it provides additional choice – and choice is good.

IntelliCloud for AWS Marketplace offers the same comprehensive set of software, infrastructure, services, and support as our popular IntelliCloud for AWS, and both will co-exist. In other words, the Marketplace offer is not replacing the original offer, it is simply another purchase option. Both provision and manage your environment for you; the only differences are how one subscribes and how one connects to the service.

Subscribing to IntelliCloud through AWS Marketplace could very well make it easier for you to do business with Teradata.

Leveraging AWS Marketplace

For those not already familiar, AWS Marketplace is an online store that helps companies discover, purchase, migrate, and immediately start using the software and services needed to build products and run their businesses. AWS handles billing and payments, and software charges appear on your AWS bill.

Subscribing to IntelliCloud through AWS Marketplace could very well make it easier for you to do business with Teradata. How so? Many firms prefer to buy through AWS Marketplace. In fact, today there are more than 192,000 active customers using AWS Marketplace worldwide. That’s a lot.

So, subscribing to IntelliCloud for AWS Marketplace simplifies procurement and contracts by allowing you to buy via a pre-approved and preferred channel with just a click-through Teradata services agreement and End User License Agreement (EULA) for the IntelliCloud subscription. The transaction is between you and AWS, and it appears on your monthly AWS bill as an AWS Marketplace transaction.

Getting Going Is Easy and Fast

Subscribing to IntelliCloud for AWS Marketplace consists of a streamlined customer procurement experience:

You click “Continue to Subscribe” and enter the desired number of TCore-Hours and Terabytes of storage, then click “Create Contract”.

After being directed to an IntelliCloud for AWS Marketplace landing page on the Teradata website, you enter your contact and AWS account info to set up your IntelliCloud Management Console (IMC) profile.

You receive a welcome email from Teradata and follow the instructions to establish a secure IMC password.

Within an hour, you receive another email indicating that your IntelliCloud environment has been provisioned and that you have been granted access to your system.

You move data into your IntelliCloud environment using standard tools such as Teradata Tools and Utilities / Teradata Parallel Transporter or Teradata Data Mover – or you can engage with Teradata Consulting for NPARC or TDMA.

You start using IntelliCloud for AWS Marketplace to generate analytic insights and business-changing answers.

(Optional) You tell all your colleagues about IntelliCloud for AWS Marketplace, tweeting and posting prolifically about its power, performance, and ease of use. Congratulations, you’re a star!

New Metering-based Model: TCore-Hours

IntelliCloud for AWS Marketplace is offered with a new metering-based pricing model that uses “TCore-Hours” as the primary metric. The new model is designed to give you greater flexibility and efficiency than the previous flat rate model, although that option still exists for those who want it (because choice is still good).

What are TCore-Hours, you ask? A TCore is a metric used to price Teradata software. TCores are “CPU cores potential based on I/O capacity”. The TCore metric provides a transparent, consistent measurement of a system configuration that takes the number of cores available and discounts that by the I/O available to keep the cores busy. Each compute instance type has a TCore rating, sort of like the “highway miles per gallon” rating for a gas-powered vehicle.

TCore-Hours is a metric that represents the availability of TCores on the underlying infrastructure, by the hour. TCore-Hours are calculated by multiplying the TCore rating(s) of the instances running Teradata software by the operating hours clocked by those instances.

Example: If you run 4 Medium-sized AWS instances (m4.10xl) of a Teradata system for 8 hours/day and 5 days a week for 1 year, you will use:

Choose What You Use – and Pay Only for What You Provision

The TCore-Hours model offers the flexibility to consume TCores only when the underlying infrastructure running Teradata software is on, which is up to you.

Many workloads are characterized by a combination of steady-state consumption coupled with spikes of high demand. With TCore-Hours, you have the flexibility to Scale your system Up, Down, Out and In to match those workload needs – as well as the ability to Stop your system when not needed – based on your requirements over time, and then draw down TCore-Hours only for the provisioned resources, which you control.

Your consumed TCore-Hours are deducted from your Block of TCore-Hours based on how you provision and adjust your IntelliCloud system. For steady-state consumption, your system utilizes TCore-Hours at a specific rate over time (e.g., per day/month/week/year). When performing elasticity operations such as Scale Up and Scale Out, TCore-Hours are drawn down from your Block at a faster rate because of the higher TCore rating of the additional compute resources being utilized.

Likewise, when you Scale Down or Scale In your system, the TCore-Hours consumption rate is decreased due to the lower TCore rating of the smaller amount of compute resources being used. What’s more, electing to Stop your IntelliCloud system halts TCore-Hours consumption for the time when the system is Stopped. If you draw down your entire Block of TCore-Hours to zero, your IntelliCloud system will remain running but you will need to purchase additional TCore-Hours via AWS Marketplace.

Such flexibility is what we mean by “metered billing”, and it opens a whole new way to think about and consume Teradata software. The emphasis shifts from flat rate capacity to metered consumption, which is what customers like you have told us you want. We listened and now we’re delivering.

We’re excited about IntelliCloud for AWS Marketplace. I encourage you to view the North America and International listings for yourself. For more information, please contact your Teradata Account team; we’ll be happy to help you get the most out of your IntelliCloud for AWS experience.